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May 13, 2007
Where are ‛Izbet Sartah and Tel Zayit?
This post is a bit of an experiment. I have been looking for good mapping software for the Ancient Near East. The other day Todd Bolen of Bible Places directed us to Bible Mapper, so I thought I'd give it a try. Because I've been working on scribal schools and abecedaries and the like, I thought I'd plot the locations of the find spots for the eleventh century BCE ‛Izbet Sartah shred with its abecedary and tenth century BCE Tel Zayit stone with its abecedary. So here is my result.
Not too bad. There was a vexing problem of getting Jerusalem to show up on the map. I started with a basic map that was supposed to reflect the period 1446 and 1050 BCE. This map showed "Jebus" where I wanted to show "Jerusalem." I was only able to show Jerusalem by selecting the 1050-933 BCE map. This kind of problem is the result of this being Bible mapping software rather than Ancient Near East mapping software and it reflects a particular viewpoint at that. The date segmentations also reflect a particular viewpoint. We know that the city was called Jerusalem in the Amarna Age, which began about 1386 BCE and ended around 1321 BCE. So, why use Jebus? Sure, the "name" Jebus occurs without a gentilic ending in Judges 19:10-11 and I Chronicles 11:4-5. This "name" seems to me to be a derived name from the gentilic "Jebusites" (who lived in Jerusalem) rather than the name of the city during any part of the period from 1446 to 1050 BCE. In any case, Jerusalem is by far a better choice. Perhaps the program should provide options both for names and the location of various geographic features. It does something like this for Hellenistic Jericho that is not quite in the same place as Bronze/Iron age Jericho. The program does allow one to make ones own custom objects. Both "‛Izbet Sartah" and "Tel Zayit" are such custom objects.
Overall, this is a very useful tool.
Posted by Duane Smith at May 13, 2007 3:50 PM | Read more on Scribal Schools |
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